1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to laying out multiple pieces of content from multiple different sources on a common page for display on a computing device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Despite the proliferation of lightweight, portable computing devices, including smartphone and tablet computers, even the owners of these devices continue to consume media from traditional printed newspapers and magazines. Paper-based newspapers and magazines have been preferred because such publications use highly skilled page design experts to create aesthetically pleasing layouts of the content. Page design experts take advantage of the fact that printed newspapers and magazines come in a relatively limited number of standard page sizes. For example, most magazines are laid out on standard trimmed size of 8.5″×11″. Standard page sizes are used in order to avoid costly custom cutting and fitting of the final printed document.
One of the problems with web content is that there is no concept of a standardized size or length for a web page. As a result, web pages frequently extend beyond the visible display area of display devices. In order to read the entire page, a user must repeatedly scroll down or across a web page in order to read it. This presentation experience is particularly frustrating to a user of device with a small screen, such as a smartphone and a tablet computer, since the user must spend considerable time scrolling back and forth or up and down to view the web page. This experience is entirely in contrast to paper-based newspapers and magazines that do not require, for example, horizontal scrolling to view blocks of text, or vertical scrolling to view embedded images—instead the user simply turns the page to continue experiencing the content.
The above challenges to presenting content on a portable computing device are exacerbated in context of a hosted social magazine. A hosted social magazine collects content from multiple sources, such as social media sites, news and information feeds, web sites, blogs, and so forth, and provides that content in a convenient assemblage for the user to read. Whereas a website or other publisher of content has complete editorial control over the layout of its content onto web pages and can use human page layout experts to design its pages, a hosted social magazine does not necessarily have such human-directed editorial control of each element of content.